pvp only accolades

[MunkiLord]

2 minutes ago, Warlawk said:

 

 

My mistake, I had dismissed this as feel good rhetoric. Happy players is good, giving things away that are relatively easy to earn is not. I'm actually in the middle of grinding out accolades right now so I'm not going on a google crusade to find studies but it has been studied and found that when players are given the important parts of their character development for little to no effort, there is a lower level of engagement and investment in said character. This results in lower long term retention of said player.

 

Same as if you go to Justin and just create your character from scratch. I wanted to see if anyone would go here or not but it didn't happen. Part of the reason people are not interested in doing so is because it creates no investment, no bond and no engagement with your character when it's just a pile of free loot you stacked onto a level 50. It's how the human brain works, release of dopamine, reward chemicals yadda yadda yadda. As a character is leveled and things like accolades are earned your brain releases those things because you've met a goal. Regardless if you enjoyed the gameplay or not, chemically it is now imprinted on your brain as a Good Thing. Removing that aspect of a character lessens the investment so we would likely see less long term retention and growth, not more.

 

And let's not present things that are completely unreasonable as if they were fact. A change like this is not going to bring any appreciable number of new players to pvp, it's just going to mean the existing pvp players don't have to invest the same time into a character that everyone else does to earn that reward.

I'd be all for that if the accolades were updated to be less terrible to acquire. If we want people to earn such things, that's fine. But it's an old legacy way of doing things that I feel should at the very least be updated. And I don't mean to replace the current methods, as I'm sure there are people that do enjoy the current process, but an alternative that is considered fun by a larger number of people.

 

And I agree about Justin, that is the very reason I don't do it.

 

And I agree, this change alone won't make much, if any, difference in PvP or general game population. But few single changes have that sort of impact. It has to start somewhere and be continuously built upon.

[Warlawk]

3 minutes ago, macskull said:

I find it odd that someone who created an entire thread devoted to finding the best farming build thinks farming for PvP IOs is exploitative behavior.

So players were using multiple accounts to afk farm and obtain rewards that were only supposed to be available from defeating another player and you somehow see that as not being exploitative behavior and try to compare it to pve inf farming.

Just... wow. We're apparently coming from such fundamentally different mindsets I don't think there's any common ground to be had on this subject.

3 minutes ago, macskull said:

I find it odd that someone who created an entire thread devoted to finding the best farming build thinks farming for PvP IOs is exploitative behavior. Moving on past that, though - could you elaborate on the effect PvP IOs had on the ingame economy? The existence of PvP IOs did not affect the prices of anything else on the market.

Top end pve IOs were selling for what... 150 million? Top end pvp recipes were selling for what... 3-4 billion? Up to double the influence cap for a single item that is only available through content most people do not want to play. This had a huge impact on the market and anyone trying to pretend otherwise is either being deliberately obtuse or using it as a piece to promote their own agenda through creative representation of information. This supply and demand situation is what led to the aforementioned exploitative behavior.

[MunkiLord]

41 minutes ago, PaxArcana said:

Then that is definitely wrong, and should be changed back.  PvP-specific rewards should only drop in PvP areas.  We PvE players who want them, should simply have to either suck it up and try PvP .... or spend INF in the Auction Hall.

 

As for the economy impact .... just set them to drop from NPC mobs, in PvP zones.

 

Or, Dev time permitting, a PvP Merit system (if there isn't one already) could be made, that rewards you for PvP activities.  Some for fulfilling objectives in PvP zones.  Some randomly from PvE enemies in PvP zones.  Some for door missions in PvP zones.  None, perhaps, for defeating anyone (or else, just a little, win or lose).  And maybe some just for spending time in a PvP zone, outside of the safe-haven of your faction's base.

And then use those to BUY the recipes you want.

If the change was never made in the first place, I would have had no problem keeping them to only dropping in PvP. But seeing as it's already been changed, I think changing it back would be a terrible mistake. First there would be a huge uproar as those are some of the best IOs, suddenly taking the potential drops away would be seen in a very negative light by a majority of people. Second, it would have a huge impact on the market. There are already some people that have hundreds of them in storage and constantly buy and sell them(like me), and we'd soon be able to charge what we wanted for them. And then you'd have people that as soon as they heard about such a change would spend billions of influence and thousands or merits(again, like me) to get as many as possible to stock up and make massive profit over the next several months. And that would just piss people off too.

 

So in theory I have no problem with such things being separate, but I feel changing it back wouldn't be a practical or satisfactory move for the majority of players. For better or worse, I think that ship has sailed.

Edited September 2, 2019 by MunkiLord

[macskull]

11 minutes ago, PaxArcana said:

Then you now admit, you want the badges too?  So noted, and my vote on the suggestion firms up as: /JRanger

 

Congratulations on that, by the way.  Instead of a potential ally, you have a staunch opponent.  Good job. [/snark]

 

Let me get this straight: you want me to cite specific and detailed examples from over ten years ago, purely from memory, that happened on a forum that no longer exists in intact and human-readable form.

 

And now, you want to hold my inability to comply with your entirely unreasonable demand, as somehow being a strike against me?

 

Don't.  Make.  Me.  Laugh.

 

 

No, I have not one single time said I wanted the badges, but good job on trying to read into what I'm saying even though I've explicitly stated in at least several places in this thread that it's the accolade powers that are being asked for. While the suggestion never never included the badges because I didn't seriously think that anyone would fail to make that distinction, your reasoning has me curious, and you now deciding you don't support the OP's idea because your enjoyment of the game would be affected if the badges were also granted is textbook entitlement. I feel like we are being counterproductive at this point - you've already said you'd be okay with the accolade powers being granted minus the badges, which is a completely reasonable request and probably what would end up happening in the first place, so I don't think it's worth rehashing this argument any further.

 

Regarding the old forums thing... you are the one making sweeping assertions about a group of players and all I'm doing is asking you to back up your assertions with concrete evidence. The forums still exist in intact and human-readable form via the Wayback Machine and the Spelunker Project, so if your assertions are indeed correct you should have no issue finding proof.

[Warlawk]

6 minutes ago, macskull said:

Regarding the old forums thing... you are the one making sweeping assertions about a group of players and all I'm doing is asking you to back up your assertions with concrete evidence. The forums still exist in intact and human-readable form via the Wayback Machine and the Spelunker Project, so if your assertions are indeed correct you should have no issue finding proof.

Sounds like a lot of effort for something that should be remembered by anyone who was active in the forums at the time. I certainly remember the jokes about "Is it Monday already? Time for the pvp thread already?"

 

The frequency of astoundingly terrible pvp suggestions was, if anything, higher than Pax has represented and of lower quality as well.

 

EDIT: Ok, that's probably hyperbole, but it was pretty silly in regularity.

Edited September 2, 2019 by Warlawk

[Haijinx]

24 minutes ago, PaxArcana said:

No.  The claim Mac is referring to, was that back on the Live forums - as in, for my own experience, from mid-2004 to early 2009 - there was a pattern of PvP suggestions that would have very badly affected PvE play.

I was just being sarcastic =p, The thread only seems like its lasted 15 years. 

 

And I agree with you.  There are ALWAYS crazy ideas for both pvp and pve in MMOs floated.

 

PVP ones often include ideas to try and lure non-pvp players into pvp areas.  So they can kill them.   Its almost like they think we cant see the guy behind the curtain.  

 

Now I think some of the motivation there is probably not simply "Lets Gank the pvpnoobs!", instead its more like "Lets get them to try PVP and then some will like it and PVP will grow."  But their attempts are often soured by the Gank the pvpnoobs crowd.  

 

This was one of the reasons I suggested a PVP server with open world PVP.  That way on that server everyone there wants to participate.   

 

  

 

 

 

 

Edited September 2, 2019 by Haijinx

[PaxArcana]

7 minutes ago, macskull said:

The forums still exist in intact and human-readable form via the Wayback Machine and the Spelunker Project, so if your assertions are indeed correct you should have no issue finding proof.

... delving through literally tens of millions of posts, over the span of half a decade.  Many of which turned sufficiently contentious, that the moderators of the time deleted those threads entirely, or else pruned great big swathes of them, making them even harder to find and cite.

That would be the work of hundreds of hours.

You're not paying me enough to do that work.

[macskull]

19 minutes ago, Warlawk said:

So players were using multiple accounts to afk farm and obtain rewards that were only supposed to be available from defeating another player and you somehow see that as not being exploitative behavior and try to compare it to pve inf farming.

Just... wow. We're apparently coming from such fundamentally different mindsets I don't think there's any common ground to be had on this subject.

Do you also consider AFK farming in AE missions to be exploitative behavior? What about AFK farming for damage badges? What about AFKing in a zone to get the "spend x time in this zone" badge? You must realize two things - drop rates on PvP IOs were and still are pretty low, and after the I13 changes the PvP population was so low that you'd almost never get a drop. Even now, when I'm PvPing for probably a dozen or more hours a week, I don't think I've gotten a single PvP IO drop off another player. The combination of low drop rate (and a lockout period after earning one) and low prevalance of the enemies you needed to even get a chance at the drops in the first place meant AFK farming was the most efficient way to get them.

19 minutes ago, Warlawk said:

Top end pve IOs were selling for what... 150 million? Top end pvp recipes were selling for what... 3-4 billion? Up to double the influence cap for a single item that is only available through content most people do not want to play. This had a huge impact on the market and anyone trying to pretend otherwise is either being deliberately obtuse or using it as a piece to promote their own agenda through creative representation of information. This supply and demand situation is what led to the aforementioned exploitative behavior.

There was only one PvP IO selling for that much, and that price was even after factoring in the higher supply from farming. You are right - it's a supply and demand thing. The Gladiator's Armor 3% defense unique was the most sought-after PvP recipe by PvE players (because 3% defense is worthless in PvP) and they were paying 3-4 billion for them because that was what the market supported. Even so, PvP IOs were never "only available through content most people do not want to play" because you could buy them on the market or trade/email them. If you didn't want to PvP for a chance at the drop, you forked over the inf. Hell, I know plenty of people that didn't PvP that started AFK farming the IOs because they were a good way to make inf if you weren't going to use them.

Edited September 2, 2019 by macskull

[PaxArcana]

4 minutes ago, macskull said:

Do you also consider AFK farming in AE missions to be exploitative behavior?

AFK farming of any sort is, IMO, exploitive behavior.  No matter where or how or what for.

And before you ask, I'm on the fence about multi-boxing.

[Warlawk]

3 minutes ago, macskull said:

Do you also consider AFK farming in AE missions to be exploitative behavior? What about AFK farming for damage badges? You must realize two things - drop rates on PvP IOs were and still are pretty low, and after the I13 changes the PvP population was so low that you'd almost never get a drop. Even now, when I'm PvPing for probably a dozen or more hours a week, I don't think I've gotten a single PvP IO drop off another player. The combination of low drop rate (and a lockout period after earning one) and low prevalance of the enemies you needed to even get a chance at the drops in the first place meant AFK farming was the most efficient way to get them.

So just because it's hard that justifies what was clearly, blatantly exploitative behavior? Really?

And I consider AFK PvE farming distasteful. It's not the same degree, but I'm not a fan. Multibox and stay active in the farming windows even if you're not pressing keys 100% of the time... sure, but true afk farming, nah.

The fact that you consider what is clearly abusive and exploitative behavior to obtain pvp ios back when it was difficult to be justified simply because they were difficult to obtain really speaks volumes.

9 minutes ago, macskull said:

PvP IOs were never "only available through content most people do not want to play" because you could buy them on the market or trade/email them.

Once again being deliberately obtuse. You know exactly the intent of that statement was that the only source of supply of said IOs was through pvp, which people did not want to play. Trying to spin it otherwise is just misrepresenting the case to try and misdirect attention from the fact that there's no underlying argument to support your position. The rest of the content of your response shows that you perfectly understood the effect this had on the economy as evidenced by this statement.

11 minutes ago, macskull said:

Hell, I know plenty of people that didn't PvP that started AFK farming the IOs because they were a good way to make inf if you weren't going to use them.

So demand was so high that people otherwise uninterested in pvp, who you knew, started abusing exploitative mechanics and yet you tried to present with your original question that you didn't believe PvP ios had a notable effect on the economy. You're tripping over yourself here and trying to misrepresent things to strengthen your position and it just makes you look bad where you had previously been one of the only reasonable and rational pvp advocates in the thread.

[Megajoule]

macskull, PaxArcana -

Would the two of you just stop poking each other already? 

Yes, both of you.

This is not helping, and as I said at least one page back, accord has been reached on the actual issue.

[Bionic_Flea]

Don't make me turn this car around!

[macskull]

1 minute ago, Warlawk said:

So just because it's hard that justifies what was clearly, blatantly exploitative behavior? Really?

And I consider AFK PvE farming distasteful. It's not the same degree, but I'm not a fan. Multibox and stay active in the farming windows even if you're not pressing keys 100% of the time... sure, but true afk farming, nah.

The fact that you consider what is clearly abusive and exploitative behavior to obtain pvp ios back when it was difficult to be justified simply because they were difficult to obtain really speaks volumes.

In order to do this you were AFK in a PvP zone which opened you up to having someone come across you and kill both your characters. It's not risk-free like you make it out to be. AFK farming was not the original intention when PvP IOs were introduced, I won't argue that, but killing another player character in a PvP environment is not an exploit or abusive behavior. I think we have a fundamental disagreement about what constitutes an exploit or exploitative behavior, and I'll leave it at that.

2 minutes ago, Warlawk said:

Once again being deliberately obtuse. You know exactly the intent of that statement was that the only source of supply of said IOs was through pvp, which people did not want to play. Trying to spin it otherwise is just misrepresenting the case to try and misdirect attention from the fact that there's no underlying argument to support your position. The rest of the content of your response shows that you perfectly understood the effect this had on the economy as evidenced by this statement.

I'm not being obtuse in any way - it's true that PvP IOs were only created through PvP, but if I wanted a PvP IO for my character I had several avenues to get one. PvP wasn't required. Regardless, if you're making an argument for PvP IOs throwing off the economy because of how expensive they were, that argument doesn't hold any water because 1) the high prices didn't translate to anything else outside of one or maybe two specific IOs, and 2) people were willing to pay that much because they had that much inf (and they didn't get 4 billion inf from PvPing, I'll tell you that much).

2 minutes ago, Warlawk said:

So demand was so high that people otherwise uninterested in pvp, who you knew, started abusing exploitative mechanics and yet you tried to present with your original question that you didn't believe PvP ios had a notable effect on the economy. You're tripping over yourself here and trying to misrepresent things to strengthen your position and it just makes you look bad where you had previously been one of the only reasonable and rational pvp advocates in the thread.

I'll reiterate - PvP IOs had no noticeable effect on the economy (where "economy" = auction house prices). We're still in disagreement of whether AFK farming is exploitative behavior so we'll ignore that bit for the rest of the discussion. PvP IOs had no effect on prices for anything other than PvP IOs. The reason one or two of them were going for 3-4 billion inf is because PvEers had enough inf on hand to afford that, and didn't want to PvP to get them. I'm not tripping over myself, I'm not misrepresenting anything, and I'm continuing to be patient and civil despite having to listen to the same tired arguments dragged up in the last ten pages of this thread.

[Warlawk]

4 minutes ago, macskull said:

I'll reiterate - PvP IOs had no noticeable effect on the economy (where "economy" = auction house prices). We're still in disagreement of whether AFK farming is exploitative behavior so we'll ignore that bit for the rest of the discussion. PvP IOs had no effect on prices for anything other than PvP IOs. The reason one or two of them were going for 3-4 billion inf is because PvEers had enough inf on hand to afford that, and didn't want to PvP to get them. I'm not tripping over myself, I'm not misrepresenting anything, and I'm continuing to be patient and civil despite having to listen to the same tired arguments dragged up in the last ten pages of this thread.

You are being civil, and kudos for that, but you are also either deliberately misrepresenting the situation or coming from a mindset that is completely alien to my understanding.

PvP had a number of very expensive IOs. Glad Armor was the most expensive but Panacia and I believe several others were worth far more than the top selling pve IOs. This created a tiny supply with high demand. The people controlling that supply were also consumers of, and dealers in, the high end IO market which was required to be functional in PvP. If you believe that situation has no effect on the remaining aspects of the economy you're either being willfully ignorant or misrepresenting something. Prior to this you hadn't shown tendencies toward either of those so I'm not really sure which it is, but I think we will just have to agree that there is not going to be any common ground here.

[macskull]

7 minutes ago, Warlawk said:

You are being civil, and kudos for that, but you are also either deliberately misrepresenting the situation or coming from a mindset that is completely alien to my understanding.

PvP had a number of very expensive IOs. Glad Armor was the most expensive but Panacia and I believe several others were worth far more than the top selling pve IOs. This created a tiny supply with high demand. The people controlling that supply were also consumers of, and dealers in, the high end IO market which was required to be functional in PvP. If you believe that situation has no effect on the remaining aspects of the economy you're either being willfully ignorant or misrepresenting something. Prior to this you hadn't shown tendencies toward either of those so I'm not really sure which it is, but I think we will just have to agree that there is not going to be any common ground here.

I think the reason prices on the market trended upward throughout the game's life had less to do with where the supply of recipes was coming from and more to do with the amount of inf being generated versus the number and effectiveness of the inf sinks the game had. Let's say for example, that there was a class of PvE IOs that were even rarer than purples, that had roughly the same supply as PvP IOs and only dropped from certain NPCs. I can practically guarantee that 1) people would be farming those NPCs nonstop, and 2) the prices for those IOs would be at parity with PvP IOs. At some point during the private server's existence, PvP IOs were made available from merit vendors and PvE mobs because presumably PvEers wanted them in their builds but there was such a small population that there just wasn't any PvP and therefore no supply. Regardless, I think with the bucketing system the current market employs, and with enhancement converters being a thing, even if PvP IOs were reverted to dropping only from players their prices wouldn't be as insane as they were on live.

Edited September 2, 2019 by macskull
Clarity

[PaxArcana]

I have to agree with Mac on the market thing.  Keeping the source limited to PvP would have been the right thing to do.  Maybe tweak up teh drop rate, but it didn't need to become PvE-available "because: the economy".

 

Also, while making them PvE-available and Merit-available were good steps to take with an abysmally low population ... now that we're back up to >50,000 players, it's no longer appropriate.  They should return to PvP-only for drop availability.  Everyone else can use the AH (PvE players get the IO they want, PvP players get the INF they need, everyone walks away a winner).

 

...

Maybe add PvP Merits, and PvP-Merit vendors in each PvP zone (and Pocket D, which seems to be a gathering place for the PvP community), and change PvP-IO drops to Pvp-Merit drops.  And PvP-Merit rewards to PvP-zone objectives (e.g. launching the Warburg nuke, or capping one of the points in RV, etc).

Maybe even - though this is something I'm wary of, for what should be obvious reasons - a small chance to drop from PvE enemies in PvP zones.

 

And then those merits can then be exchanged for PvP IO recipes, or exchanged for the various other Merit types and analogs.

That'd entail a lot of dev time, but would have the advantage of being easily expanded to buy any new PvP-specific rewards that might be created in the future.

Edited September 2, 2019 by PaxArcana

[macskull]

I'm okay with keeping PvP IO drops the way they are because it means 1) that's one less thing I have to farm for and 2) prices would go nuts if they only dropped from PvP defeats.

Edited September 2, 2019 by macskull

[MunkiLord]

45 minutes ago, macskull said:

I'm okay with keeping PvP IO drops the way they are because it means 1) that's one less thing I have to farm for and 2) prices would go nuts if they only dropped from PvP defeats.

I also prefer things to stay as is for the reasons you stated. But I do get dollar signs in my eyes thinking about all the influence to be made if that does happen.

[Kimuji]

On the matter of PVP IOs half of their set bonuses are already disabled for PVE so there's that.

Edited September 2, 2019 by Kimuji

[Zepp]

PvP IOs were a mistake in the way they were implemented. There were several that were extremely good for PvE, but only accessible through PvP grind or the market (Gladiator's Armor +3Def, Panacea +HP, Shield Wall +5Res, Fury of the Gladiator -Res, etc.) . This led to absurd market issues. This happens in MMOs all the time. Top-level gear that is only accessible via PvP. It is the reason that there are many people that are concerned about the proposal. This is also why it is, in general, a bad idea to have PvP-specific drops.

Edited September 2, 2019 by Zepp

[macskull]

3 hours ago, Kimuji said:

On the matter of PVP IOs half of their set bonuses are already disabled for PVE so there's that.

It's not so much that the bonuses are disabled for PvE as they are enabled for PvP. They've already got some pretty solid PvE set bonuses so anything past that is icing on the cake.

2 hours ago, Zepp said:

PvP IOs were a mistake in the way they were implemented. There were several that were extremely good for PvE, but only accessible through PvP grind or the market (Gladiator's Armor +3Def, Panacea +HP, Shield Wall +5Res, Fury of the Gladiator -Res, etc.) . This led to absurd market issues. This happens in MMOs all the time. Top-level gear that is only accessible via PvP. It is the reason that there are many people that are concerned about the proposal. This is also why it is, in general, a bad idea to have PvP-specific drops.

It wasn't the fact that they were PvP drops which led to those prices, it was the supply vs demand. If they'd been PvE drops of comparative rarity the prices would have been the same. This game has never had gear accessible solely via PvP and I don't think anyone is advocating for that.

[Zepp]

The combination of low drop rate and limiting them to only a minor portion of the content that only a small portion of players dealt with led to the prices. If they had been available outside of PvP zones with the same drop rate we would not have seen those prices.

[PaxArcana]

Or if they upped the drop rate.

Either way, increasing the total supply would have lowered the price.

[macskull]

It is worth noting that prices for the most desirable PvP IOs were not initially quite that high because there was no lockout period for getting a chance at a drop. Once that lockout period was added is when prices shot through the roof.

[generalkno]

There are other factors that impact in game economy as well, it's a little more complex than just that, but Im not saying you're both wrong. On live there were a lot more marketeers that intentionally drove prices up. Homecoming put in a lot of ways of preventing that such as converters, merit reward, and the extremely smart move of the salvage dump (If you remember on homecoming release people were driving rare salvage extremely high).